By Anne Fraser and Barbara Zuchegna
With assistance from Sharon Pickrel and Jean Lamb
Copyright 1999

Chapter Thirty-Four

T'beth led her contingent of followers down the other side of Khelat, opposite Adrian and his group. She was grinning. The little bastard was doing a splendid job of being a general and commanding his troops. It wasn't a role she'd ever pictured Adrian in. Carrock would have been surprised as hell.

The vampires of Khelat were fighting back, at least the ones above ground, but they didn't have silver weapons. At least not silver bullets, she amended, remembering the silver chains that had bound her and the silver coated bars that had kept her imprisoned. They had a couple of silver knives, maybe, and that was it. Maybe they were even now melting down the silver chains to make bullets.

She turned and sprayed nearly half a clip of her expensive ammunition at one of the Khelat vampires who was running across the open area of the fort. He dropped, but some of her bullets went slamming into the wall near Adrian's bunch. He didn't even flinch, though she could see Jake ducking.

The one she'd just dropped seemed to be the last of the aboveground opposition. Eyes peeled, senses and extrasensory powers on full alert, T'beth motioned her vampires towards the ruined building that guarded the stairs into underground Khelat.

They made it there at the same time as Adrian and his coterie.

Adrian nodded his head when he saw T'beth arrive, intact, and all her followers likewise. If he hadn't been into persona as Richard, he likely would have said, "Ill met by moonlight"; but Richard never quoted from Shakespeare. Instead, as Richard would have, he simply went first down the stairs without any comment at all.

T'beth rolled her eyes and her gaze caught Jake's equally martyred expression.

'If he keeps this up much longer,' the female vampire hissed into Jake's mind, 'I'll give him the same thing I gave Richard.'

Jake couldn't help where his mind went, and T'beth had to refrain herself from socking him. 'Not that, Fowler,' she mentally slapped him one. 'A good right hand sucker punch to the gut.'

'You did that to Richard?' Jake asked unbelievingly.

'Yes, and he landed one right back, so now we're friends,' T'beth grinned. "Come on," she said out loud, signaling to the confused Sa'idian vampires. Ed, knowing his place, had already followed Adrian down into the underground. "We'd better follow the king."

Adrian didn't look back. He could "hear" T'beth and Jake's exchange, and knew they would be right behind him quickly enough. Ed was back there, and that was a bit of a worry--bringing a mortal, smelling of fresh blood, into a vampire lair. He had noticed that none of the mortal guards were left at Khelat, and drew his own conclusions. Tough luck on the mortals to be handy when the vampires needed munchies.

He could feel them down here, as he had last time. He wished he could have brought someone with him who was more experienced with fighting a nest of nasty vampires than the Exalted Ones of Sa'idi. They'd had it pretty soft, for vampires, everything handed to them. The trouble was that the only vampires he knew who were experienced at this kind of thing happened to be his (im)mortal enemies. T'beth was more of a one-on-one fighter, Ed was human, and Jake ... Jake was now a seasoned fighter but these were vampires he was up against, not humans.

Wars without people…

When the others joined up, he sent them off in small groups again, fanning out through the maze of underground passages. The aim was to herd the Khelat vampires towards a central collecting point, the detention area. Undead ferrets in a rabbit warren. He and Jake and Ed followed the farthest right-hand passage. He could 'feel' T'beth and two others going off another way, and the rest of the remaining Sa'idian vamps, their numbers reduced to a round dozen, went off in yet more directions.

The rat takes the cheese.

Rounding up the Khelat vampires was pathetically easy. A short burst of silver ammo, and they ran precisely in the direction Adrian wanted them to run. There seemed to be fewer of them, too. Undoubtedly, without Bahram to boss them around, there had been infighting and arguments and desertion.

Adrian could hear the others moving through the underground, occasionally punctuated by automatic gunfire, and he could hear the Khelat vampires stampeding towards the center. He and his two lieutenants reached the center of the maze, guns ready.

The vampires of Khelat, what was left of them, were waiting down near the abandoned cells. Not quite abandoned, Adrian hastily amended, but what was in them didn't bear close examination. Quite dead, anyway. These vampires didn't even throw out the empty containers. Tsk.

Jake, T'beth and the Sa'idians caught up to Adrian and Ed as they stopped at an invisible line several meters away from the cluster of Khelat vampires.

Showdown time, Jake thought.

The vampires of Khelat were all grouped together by the cells, glaring at the intruders to their underground realm. Their numbers, Jake noticed as Adrian had already ascertained, were much smaller. They had the look of sullen, defeated pit dogs overcome by the rats.

There was a shifting amongst them, some elbowing and hissing. One of them stepped forward, a woman. She addressed T'beth in Farsi, not bothering to look at anyone else, including Adrian.

"Why do you come back here, bearing the poison metal?" the spokeswoman demanded of their former captive. "We did only what Bahram commanded; we bear you no ill will."

"Really?" T'beth replied. "I bear you lots of it." She kept her crossbow trained somewhere near the middle of the pack, so that no one of the vampires was singled out ... so that none of them could tell which one she'd kill if they made a move. "But I'm doing only what I'm commanded to do, for that matter. If you have any complaints, you had best take them up with the Professor." She indicated Adrian.

"He is your sire?" the woman asked in disbelief.

"He is my commander," T'beth replied, and added, 'for about the next ten seconds' under her breath.

Scowling, the woman studied Adrian again. There was something in the set of his face, the expression in his eyes...

"You bring killing metal," she said to him in English. "We cannot fight it."

"Do you surrender?" Adrian asked, tone stern. Something of the whipcrack was in those three simple words.

There was another argument amongst the Khelat vampires and one of them fell suddenly, like a tree toppling, with a crossbow bolt in his heart. T'beth looked up calmly as a ripple of fear moved through the enemy.

"He moved," she said.

"We surrender," said the spokeswoman hastily. "Do not set your assassin upon us, Englishman." Her eyes narrowed as they focussed on Jake and Ed behind Adrian. "That one stinks of human blood," she pointed at Ed, "and once more you bring that perversion amongst us, the half-blood."

Jake started angrily, but Adrian stopped him with a look. "You stand here in a jackals' nest and speak of perversions?" the actor demanded. "Look around you, foul offspring of a diseased bloodline! Look at your cages full of rotting corpses, your hearts full of rotting hate. You are no better than carrion eaters! And carrion eaters serve a useful purpose; you do not. Vampires! Parasites is more like it."

T'beth quickly translated his words in Farsi, ensuring that everyone understood them. The Khelat vampires looked angry. The Sa'idi vampires were looking slightly uncomfortable, having heard a version of this speech themselves.

"Bahram was a fool, and his get are sons and daughters of a fool," Adrian went on. "You cannot live this way! Cringing underground, like vermin, walled up in a fort like women in purdah! Preying on humans, as if you were bandits or wild animals! A vampire should walk proud, not hide. There is no need to hide what you are if you use some common sense! You should not use humans as cattle, but live amongst them, learn their ways, befriend and aid them. In turn, they will shelter and nourish you, not run in fear from you and do their best to kill you."

Some of the Khelat vampires were starting to nod at each other, thinking that this made sense, but most of them were scowling disbelievers.

Adrian strode forward. "Look at me!" he commanded. "How many here can boast four centuries?"

None of them could. Bahram had been the eldest, the few who were several centuries old had either left or been killed in rivalry fights after Bahram's death.

"I can," Adrian said. "Four centuries of seeing stupid, mindless vampires, who thought that being big bad predators was the only way to function, die at the hands of the very mortals they dismissed as being mere dinner. I would prefer to have this mortal and this half-blood as you call him at my side than any dozen of you feeble, spoiled bottom-feeders. I know them and trust them; I would not trust any of you to take out the garbage." He once more indicated the debris in the cells. "And my point is proven," he added.

Almost all the Khelat vampires were looking whipped by this point. The spokeswoman stepped forward. Carefully, aware of T'beth's crossbow, she held her hands out. "But what else shall we do?" she asked. "This is the only existence we have known."

"These," Adrian indicated the Sa'idi vampires, especially the looming presence of Shapour, "my allies, they can show you the way a vampire should live. You must swear allegiance to them, you must forget that fool Bahram and promise to obey Shapour as your bloodsire."

"Why not you?" she challenged.

"I am destined for other things," Adrian replied grandly, making Jake, Ed, T'beth, and Shapour all want to kick him in the butt. "I must return to my own country," he went on in a less regal tone, "but Shapour remains here, and he is the leader of the local Exalted Ones. He will teach you their ways, and guide you in your new life."

He didn't quite dare look at Shapour, because he hadn't discussed this at all with the big black vampire. But Shapour seemed to be taking it calmly.

The black vampire bit his wrist. The Khelat vampires all fastened their eyes on the sight of Exalted blood dripping to the concrete floor of the holding cell area.

"You must drink," said Shapour, in Farsi. "Drink my blood and become my children."

One by one, eagerly or reluctantly, some few prodded by T'beth's crossbow or a silver-tipped knife from a Sa'idian vampire, the Khelat Exalted knelt to Shapour, drank his blood, and swore allegiance.

The Khelat vampires had all sworn fealty to Shapour. The big black Exalted One was looking perhaps a tiny bit smug ... he not only had all these formerly evil Exalted now under his direct authority, he also had twice so far managed to score with the prettiest boy he'd ever seen.

Things looked good. Adrian was probably going to go back to Canada, but the Khelat Exalted were staying and had to do what Shapour told them to. He risked gloating. Adrian caught the expression. Adrian was still firmly in Richard mode.

"It is bad form," the actor said, courteous to the point where Shapour's ears went back, "to gloat. We have defeated these Exalted and ensured their good behavior in the future. That is victory enough; anything else will simply promote ill feelings."

Ed, T'beth and Jake all exchanged looks that involved rolling eyes and significant gestures. Shapour's expression hinted that if he got Adrian alone, the actor was going to have a very hard time.

"Come!" Adrian addressed his troops. "We must return to Saravan, and report our victory!"

He led the way, of course. Even his walk was Richard's, a purposeful yet somewhat restless stride that conveyed nobility and determination and that made him look taller.

Behind him, T'beth fell into pace beside Shapour. He nodded to her--he'd come to learn to respect this female, she was a formidable fighter.

"C'est un enfant terrible," Shapour grumbled, glaring at Adrian's ramrod-straight back as it preceded him out of the fort.

"Oui," T'beth agreed sweetly. She whispered something that made Shapour break into a grin.

If Adrian had heard her, he would have thrown a fit.

Jake and Ed, slightly behind Shapour and T'beth, were sharing their own exchange.

"So now Pretty Boy will be unlivable," Ed muttered. "Not that he's livable now."

Jake quirked his mouth. "I'm not so sure about that, Ed," the anthropologist replied, shifting his much-used rifle to a more comfortable carrying position. "He's playing Richard, right?"

"I caught onto that awhile ago, the little bastard," Ed nodded.

"What do you think is going to happen when we return to Saravan and report to the real Richard?"

Ed thought about it. His eyes widened, and he began to chuckle. "Someone," he predicted, "is going to be very courteous, indeed."

"It might be kinder to let Shapour beat the crap out of him," Jake said happily.

"You could sell tickets to that," Ed said.

Up ahead, Adrian paused in the doorway of the fort. He nodded to the Sa'idians that had remained on guard and turned to look back at his troops.

"If he makes a speech," Jake growled, "I'll fucking stake him myself."

But Adrian was playing Richard, and Richard wouldn't have made speeches. He simply said, "It would be best if some of the Sa'idi Exalted remained here to ensure the peace and that Shapour's orders are obeyed. I will need Shapour himself in Saravan, to help with the situation there, but perhaps there are some of you who would not mind remaining here?"

There were, of course. Richard would have been obeyed, and so was Adrian, even though it hadn't actually been an order. Shapour's expression was calculating, indeed. But he said nothing. Adrian led the way to where the vehicles had been left; and the convoy returned to Saravan.

He had made time, during the day, to come to her for a few moments at a time ... to have lunch with her, and then dinner, to have a glass of wine and talk with her for a few minutes. He sat with her quietly, careful not to touch her, and answered her questions and listened to her musings ... and knew he was not deceiving her at all. He loved her; he wanted nothing so much as to be with her. But the weight of the work that needed to be done drove him relentlessly, and she could read him as easily as if he had been an impatient child.

Finally, laughing at him, she said, "Richard, I don't need to be entertained. Go and do whatever it is you have to do. Come back when there's nothing left that's needed."

They already knew each other so well, and she didn't have to learn of his inability to turn his back on responsibility. It was as much a part of him as the eyes she loved or the hands that could set her on fire. And she loved him for it, as she loved him for everything that was in him.

So he went back to the thousand and one problems that waited for him in the office below, and it was late when, finally, he felt he had done as much as it was possible to do for this first day and he headed back upstairs to the suite of rooms that she had now made into their own. The sentry he had left on the door ... a much calmer man than the one who had been there earlier in the day, stopped him.

"Vaje Richard, the Kanum is not inside. She waits over there." He nodded at another set of doors, across the hall and down a ways ... Zanjani's private bath. There was another guard standing there.

Richard nodded to the man and went on down the hall. The guard on the bath opened the door to usher him inside and closed the door firmly behind him.

The wall was open to the outside gallery, and the scent of roses drifted up from below, mingling with the scents from the water. There was very little light; less than half the hanging lamps were lit, and only over the pools. Immediately before the opening in the wall, a large, low bed had been placed, so close to the edge of the gallery that anyone lying there would be able to look up to the stars above. "That," Richard said aloud, "was not there when I was last in this place."

Her voice came from the shadows at the farthest end of the room. "Neither was I. For the sake of your inhibitions, my love, you should know that the gardens below and the gallery outside are deserted and guarded ... no one can enter either one until I tell the guards it's allowed."

She came toward him, walking along the far edge of the row of thin, carved alabaster pillars, her hand trailing, touching each one as she passed. Her hair was loose, spilling over her shoulders and down her back, glinting in the uncertain light. She was wearing a single drift of sleeveless pale blue chiffon, caught at the waist with a knotted twist of satin in a deeper blue, through which he could see the pale rose color of her skin, the deeper rose of the blunt points of her breasts.

"And how did you get the guards to take orders from you?"

Walking slowly, drifting almost, on the far side of the pools, she said, "Richard, your friend, Ardeshir, is a very understanding gentleman."

She stopped, beyond the middle pool, and said, "Let me show you what I found." Her hands did something at a pillar beside the pool and the water began to roil vigorously. "Not exactly a jacuzzi, but nice."

He had not moved from the door. "There seems to be an uncommon concern among the Awakened for my personal hygiene," he said.

Her head tilted; the heavy waves of gold slipped sideways, sparkling in the light from the lamp just above her. "This particular Awakened is concerned with everything that is personal about you," she said. "This particular Awakened wants to bathe you, my love, because she loves to put her hands on you. And if you insist on working so late, you owe me the chance to ... invigorate you."

He could feel her mind flowing into his, her thoughts winding through his, her love wrapping itself all around him. He smiled at her, the smile that only she in all the world would ever have from him. "I was not aware that I had ever disappointed you with my lack of vigor," he said.

"Well, we for damned sure don't want to start now," she said, and came around the edge of the pool, walking slowly toward him, letting the light from behind her outline her body through the shifting folds of her nightdress.

Lily was a beautiful woman who was carelessly comfortable in her beauty, and usually thoughtless of it, except when she had found it an annoyance because some women resented it and some men could not see past it. She had grown up in a large family of brothers, and their friends had made her aware at a very early age that her looks were extraordinary. She had grown into it, accepted it as part of what she was, and seldom gave it a thought. Until this man looked at her. Until that first day, beside the road, when his eyes had traveled slowly up from her feet to her face, and something inside her had melted in a way she'd never felt before.

Walking toward him, feeling his eyes move over her almost as tangibly as the touch of his hands, she was intensely aware of his pleasure in watching her. Seeing herself through his eyes, feeling the excitement growing inside him while he held himself so quiet, so still, she was humbly grateful that she had been born beautiful enough to please him. Her voice was soft, teasing, as she said, "You've been busy. So many problems. I visited you, a few times."

He smiled. "I thought so. I could feel you in my mind."

"I didn't stay. I was distracting you. And I didn't want you distracted. I wanted you to finish ... I wanted you to be free to come here. I should warn you that I have had hours to imagine this night, my dear Richard. You are going to have to outdo yourself to live up to my imagination." She had reached him now, and her hands rested on the buckle of the belt that held his sheathed dagger and holstered handgun. She stood on tiptoe to brush her lips lightly against his. "Do you think you can do that, my love?"

"Probably not."

"But you're willing to try." Her lips slid slowly down the line of his throat. His belt fell, and he felt her hands on the frogged clasps of the velvet shirt.

"Within the limits of my stamina, certainly. A gentleman could do no less."

She had unfastened the front of his shirt and spread it open now, her hands cool on his chest, tracing the lines of muscle, the nipples, sliding up to his shoulders to push the shirt off onto his arms. It slithered noiselessly down and he wriggled his arms to let it fall away.

Her head rested briefly against his chest, her hands slid around to his back, scratching lightly. "I love your chest," she murmured against his skin. "Do you think I would love you as much if you weren't so hard? If you were a soft little man, who was nice and pillowy..."

He laughed. "Would I love you as much if you weren't so soft? If you were a great, tall, bony woman, with a mustache, perhaps?"

Her head tilted up and there was a sudden, speculative look in the great brown eyes. "It might be fun to see. I could do that, Richard ... make you a soft little pillowy man, just for a little while. I could give you a great, round belly and flabby thighs..."

"Liar."

He was right. Her mind was entirely open to him, and she had no such power. He bent his head and kissed her lightly. "Besides," he said, "you have already revealed to me how much you enjoy the present model."

"That's true." Her hands slid down his back to rest on his buttocks. "I think you're beautiful, Richard. But I refuse to deal with those damned clodhoppers you're wearing." He staggered as his hiking boots vanished, unexpectedly dropping his suddenly bare feet an inch to the cool marble floor, and she steadied him against her. "Oh, hell," she whispered, and concentrated briefly again. His pants vanished, and he made a small, gasping noise as his freed erection brushed against her. She stepped quickly back, releasing him, shaking her head. "Oh, no you don't. Not yet. I'm going to give you a bath, Richard. I've been planning it all day."

He had been so still, ever since he stepped through the door, that when he moved with his unexpected quickness, he caught her totally off guard. He swept her up off the floor before she could dance back away from him. "Later," he said, in a voice that allowed no argument. And when he laid her down on the wide bed, and untied her sash and spread her nightdress wide, Liliana was in no mood to argue.

He lived up to her imagination, and surpassed it.

Liliana was dozing, her head lying on his chest, her hair spread out over him, her small hand resting lightly at his waist. She had given him his bath, finally, and found that he could make love to her there, as well. She fed him strawberries dipped in melted chocolate and the driest, most sparkling of champagnes, and found that these, too, suggested delightful innovations to his own imagination that she hadn't dreamed of through the long hours of the day. He made certain she would never taste either one again without remembering this night.

Because she asked, during one quiet period when he conceded that even she needed to rest briefly, he told her something about his day. He told her about the damaged electrical plant, about the fouled water system that had forced the people here to boil their water for months, about the selection of a religious leader who could be nominated for the vacant position of ayatollah and who would satisfy Teheran while being wise enough to be flexible about his powers and responsibilities. He told her about the accountant who held the key code to Zanjani's private accounts ... the enormous fortune he had stolen from the people of the province, and who was persuaded that it was in his vital interests to provide access to that fortune for the use of the city. A hundred other details ... from organizing kitchen staff for the palace to appointing new officers for the demoralized police corps.

She had always known of his ability to organize and to lead, but even she was astounded with what he had accomplished during a single day. She said so, kissing him, and all thought of Saravan and its problems was driven from his mind. He would try to please her, he had said, to the limits of his stamina. His stamina, after the day he had put in, was as remarkable as his accomplishments. He was still awake, his hands still drifting slowly over her, when Liliana gave in to simple exhaustion and went limp against him.

She woke, sometime later, when she felt him easing his body out from under her. He was getting up, and distantly, Lily heard the same thing he was clearly listening to. "What is it?" she asked.

"I don't know." His voice was very calm. "Sweetheart, I must ask you to retrieve my clothes from wherever you sent them to."

She did, and sat up, watching as he dressed hurriedly. She slid into her abandoned nightdress while he strode across to the door and went out. There was a rising tide of sound coming from somewhere toward the front of the palace. She stepped out onto the gallery and heard it more clearly ... many voices, raised in excitement or anger ... she couldn't tell which. And then, still distant but gaining in volume by the moment, she heard the chanting. "Ah-dri-an! Ah-dri-an! Ah-dri-an!"

Jake Fowler and Ed Perry were watching the performance with growing disbelief. They hadn't expected that the square before the palace would still be full of people at this hour, but it was. When the caravan of mis-matched vehicles came streaming up to the bottom of the steps, scattering the watching Saravanians before it, and someone (probably one of the Sa'idi Exalted, Jake thought) began to cheer, the crowd wasn't long in taking it up. And damned if Adrian didn't stand up in the ATV, waving his rifle triumphantly over his head, like bloody Lawrence of Arabia acknowledging the homage of the desert tribesmen.

To make matters worse, Shapour and another of the Sa'idians clambered into the ATV and raised Adrian up to sit on their shoulders, and Shapour bellowed something in Farsi that drew an enthusiastic roar from the crowd. Jake only got one word ..."Ahdrian," but T'beth, snorting explosive laughter, cheerfully sent a mental translation to Jake. Ed Perry, not privy to this, jerked on Jake's arm. "What the hell's going on?" he demanded, shouting to make himself heard from a foot away.

Jake looked bleak. "You don't want to know."

"Yes, I do, dammit! What'd Shapour say?"

Jake sighed, and bent over close to Ed's ear. "He said, 'All hail Ah-dri-an, Conqueror of Khelat, Vanquisher of the Evil Exalted!'"

Jake Fowler and Ed Perry made their way glumly out of the ATV and pushed through the crowd that swarmed toward the steps leading up to the palace doors as Shapour and another of the Sa'idi Exalted carried Adrian Talbot on their shoulders up to the broad landing at the top. T'beth, on their heels, was almost staggering with glee.

"Will you for Chrissake knock that off?" Jake yelled at her, trying to make himself heard over the rhythmic chanting of "Ah-dri-an! Ah-dri-an!" spilling from several hundred enthusiastic mouths. Hell, most of these people probably didn't even know what Khelat was, much less what the significance of "conquering" it might have been. The place had been abandoned for years before Bahram's vampires had taken it over.

'Lighten up, Jake,' T'beth giggled, mentally. 'Just enjoy the show.'

Jake couldn't. Working his way with Ed to the steps by simply shoving the mostly smaller Iranians the hell out of their way, he watched Shapour and the other big guy set Adrian down on the landing and turn back to the crowd, exhorting it to more and louder clamoring. Adrian, who at least had sense enough to stop waving the idiotic rifle around, stood there between his outsized honor guard and posed for the adoring masses like Julius Caesar on a triumphal entry into Rome. All he needed was a laurel wreath to replace the black headband he'd lost somewhere along the way.

It went on for what seemed like a very long time. Jake and Ed trooped up the wide steps, off to the side, and stood by one of the massive pillars that supported the balcony above ... the balcony from which Zanjani had once made his own public appearances. Down below, upturned faces, smiling, exuberant, lit by the banked spotlights all across the front of the palace, bellowed Adrian's name in eerie unison.

"He's eating it up, our Pretty Boy," Ed said with weary cynicism.

"He's an actor," Jake said. "He's got an audience on its feet and cheering. You think he's gonna exit, stage left?"

"I think he'd better," Ed said, and with a jerk of his head, directed Jake's attention to the far side of the broad landing, where, in the deep shadow by the opposite pillars, Richard Plantagenet stood, in a stance in which Jake had never seen him, as if relaxed, his ankles crossed, his arms crossed over his chest, the point of one shoulder against the pillar beside him. He was watching Adrian with no expression at all on his face.

"Oh, shit," Jake said sickly. "If Adrian makes a speech..."

It did occur to Jake that he could let Adrian know Richard was there. He saw T'beth come gliding smoothly up the steps to stand at his side, her eyes on his with bright speculation. She hadn't told Adrian. She was wondering if he was going to. And smiling her sleek, feral little smile.

"People of Saravan!"

T'beth's smile became a shit-eating grin. Adrian, damn him, was actually going to make a speech, and she had no intention of letting him know that Richard was in his audience. Jake turned from her to watch Adrian posturing before the crowd, and decided that he wasn't going to, either. Adrian had already earned whatever courtesy Richard might want to show him; let him deal with it.

"People of Saravan!" Adrian shouted again, his actor's voice carrying surprisingly well over the roar of the crowd.

Below him the front ranks of the Saravanians began to quiet, eager to hear whatever pearls of wisdom he meant to cast before them. Shapour's booming voice, doing the translation, quieted a lot more of them. His massive hands, raised now in a hushing gesture, completed the job. The crowd fell, for the most part, silent.

"People of Saravan!" Adrian shouted once more, and felt T'beth's sneering, 'Awright, Talbot. We got that part,' in his head. Shapour bellowed the translation again anyway.

"Friends, Sa'idians, Saranvanians," Adrian intoned, and T'beth's uncontrollable snort was clearly audible through Shapour's attempt to translate. "Tonight," Adrian continued, ignoring T'beth, "we have won a great victory!"

Shapour translated. More cheering, more applauding, more chanting. But at least it died down more quickly.

"The Evil Exalted who did the despicable work of the vile Zanjani are no more!"

Shapour translated. T'beth laughed out loud. The crowd looked momentarily puzzled, and then seemed to decide..."What the hell?" and began to cheer and chant again. Shapour looked briefly embarrassed, then frowned and just looked annoyed.

T'beth was leaning on Jake, clutching his arm to keep herself upright. "What?" he demanded. "What's so funny?"

She struggled to regain control. "Shapour's English isn't up to our boy's speechifying," she sputtered. "Or he couldn't think of a Farsi word for 'despicable.'"

"What did he say?"

"That the Evil Exalted who did Zanjani's spankable work were no more."

Adrian wasn't aware of the flub, and clearly, Shapour was in no mood to have it pointed out to him. Adrian, really into the thing now, strode back and forth a few paces along the front of the landing, his voice ringing out as Shapour did the best he could, with T'beth collapsing in giggles more and more, and the crowd becoming more and more puzzled ... but every bit as enthusiastic.

"No more will the Evil penetrate your homes in the night!" Adrian exulted, and when Shapour got his gums around this one, T'beth was damned near helpless. Jake had to physically support her ... and try to shut her the hell up … until she ‘sent’ him Shapour’s translation, "There will be no more bad fucking in your houses at night." At that point Jake had trouble enough keeping his own mouth shut.

Adrian gave them a bit of Henry V, a bit of Patrick Henry, even a bit of rather cunningly funny Racine. Shapour was being stretched to his limits and way beyond, and every slip he made sent T'beth into more helpless gales of half-swallowed laughter. Shapour kept cutting quick glances in her direction that seemed to blame Jake for his inability to keep her quiet.

"From where the sun rises, a new day of freedom dawns in Saravan!" Adrian finally finished, which Shapour seemed to get right, and the crowd went into ecstasies of applause and cheering, followed by more "Ah-dri-an! Ah-dri-an!" Everyone just seemed to be having one hell of a good time.

Rifles were fired into the air, people jumped up and down, voices tumbled over voices in joyous celebration ... of what, Jake was reasonably sure none of these people had any idea. But it had been a long time since Saravan had celebrated anything, and if Adrian's speech, garbled through Shapour, made no sense at all to these people, it didn't seem to matter a whole hell of a lot.

Shapour stood beside Adrian, beaming out over the crowd, and placed one large, possessive hand on Adrian's buttocks to make it absolutely clear that this beautiful little paragon everyone was cheering so happily was his exclusive property. Adrian, caught up in the outpouring of love from his audience, didn't seem to notice. Richard, Jake was suddenly aware, did. The only expression Jake had seen on Richard's face since they first noticed him was a small, and very brief, frown of displeasure. It was gone almost before he saw it, but its import was evident, even to T'beth.

'Uh-oh,' she snickered in Jake's mind. 'If he says one word to Adrian about that, I want a front row seat.'

Jake didn't. And he had an uneasy feeling Richard was for damned sure going to say something about it.

Adrian had drawn himself up to his full, strangely enhanced height while he basked in the adulation of the masses. But a good actor knows to exit before the applause begins to die, so he raised his hands in modestly manly farewell, and stepping back, turned away from the crowd ... and froze. He was looking directly into Richard's expressionless dark eyes as Richard moved slowly out of the shadows.

T'beth started forward, and Jake grabbed her arm. She could have pulled away from him with ease; hell, she could have tossed him ass over teakettle down the steps with ease. Instead, she looked up at him, vaguely puzzled.

Jake didn't say anything, aloud or any other way. He was watching Richard. Everyone on the steps, and everyone in the rapidly quieting crowd, was watching Richard.

"Adrian," Richard said, in a voice that was pitched low but was as penetrating as steel, "if I could have a moment of your time?"

He didn't wait for Adrian's answer. He turned on his heel and headed for the broad, open double doors of the palace.

Adrian, without looking up at Shapour, who was scowling thunderously, hesitated only a moment, and then followed.

He was already shorter, Jake thought.